Are google bots smarter than, say, an Apprentice candidate?

[swee'pea99]

A friend who helped me put together a new website for my company suggested that I put in a load of text stuffed with key search words at the bottom of every page inside <div class="nodisplay"> </div> tags. 'If you just put all the words in a list, the google bots would recognise it as a list, and you'd get penalised,' he said, 'but so long as you incorporate them into genuine grammatical sentences within a grammatical prose structure, google will accept it, and it'll boost your ranking.'

Since when, I've been working hard to optimise for google (making sure alt tags are helpful, unique and informative, using words in all urls, giving all jpgs helpful descriptive names etc) and my researches into how to do this have inevitably brought me face to face with various accounts of how You Mustn't Be Sneaky, eg:

"If your site is perceived to contain hidden text and links that are deceptive in intent, your site may be removed from the Google index, and will not appear in search results pages. When evaluating your site to see if it includes hidden text or links, look for anything that's not easily viewable by visitors of your site. Are any text or links there solely for search engines rather than visitors?"

​

Clearly the answer to that is currently 'yes'. So, is my friend right, or are we in danger of being 'removed from the google index?' (I have to say, he's a nice chap, and quite knowledgeable about many things, but he does have a pronounced BS-tendency.)

 

[ColinJ]

[/i]

I don't think Google could be much clearer on that one and I'd rather trust what they say on the subject than your friend!

If you think back about 10 years ago or so, you would find results in the search engines which were basically massive pages stuffed full of 'keywords'. Do you find those now?

People used to use tricks like white text on a white background. Viewers wouldn't be able to read the text so it could be as 'spammy'as they liked, but the search engines responded to it. Once they got wise to tricks like that, naturally Google put checks in place to ignore or penalise them. Even if you could get away with it for a few months, do you really want to risk being penalised in the future when some Google algorithm changes?

 

[2Loose]

+1, let the google bots rank your website content based on the words that are actually visible to the viewer.

Any attempt at circumvention may work...until google change their ranking mechanism and then penalise you accordingly.

I have found google can find and rank threads on this CC almost immediately as they are posted. Any subsequent research on the thread subject will find CC right up in the page ranking, no hidden tags needed

 

[MossCommuter]

I don't understand the weird science that is the Google spider (no-one does, they're very guarded) but I read that you also climb up the rankings if other sites link to you.

[edited for typo]

 

[swee'pea99]

Thanks chaps...I think you've basically confirmed what I knew in my heart of hearts. I've got rid of it all. 

 

[ColinJ]

I have found google can find and rank threads on this CC almost immediately as they are posted.  Any subsequent research on the thread subject will find CC right up in the page ranking, no hidden tags needed 

It's incredible isn't it! I've often found my own posts on CC through Google within an hour of making them.

My blog usually gets indexed within hours. Let's test it... I'll search for some words in the title of my last post about my CycleChat forum ride on Sunday (the post date has been changed back to Sunday night but I actually posted it at about 00:15 this morning). 

Here you go - Waddington Fell ride! (current result is number 1 on page 1 of Google.co.uk).  That's achieved purely by writing about the bike ride over Waddington Fell, having the words ride Waddington Fell in the URL ,title tags, alt text of a photograph, and title of a photograph, and having a history of writing about bike rides including some through Waddington in the past.

PS And our trio25 is in at number 3!

 

[MossCommuter]

Here you go - Waddington Fell ride! (current result is number 1 on page 1 of Google.co.uk). That's achieved purely by writing about the bike ride over Waddington Fell, having the words ride Waddington Fell in the URL ,title tags, alt text of a photograph, and title of a photograph, and having a history of writing about bike rides including some through Waddington in the past.

and an external link (from here)

 

[ColinJ]

and an external link (from here)

Ah, but the link only goes to my home page and it is "nofollow"!

 

[MossCommuter]

Ah, but the link only goes to my home page and it is "nofollow"!

LOL, OK, busted!

hhmmm - but can the Google spider ignore "nofollows"...

...anyway, was just pulling ya leg (and trying to make mesen look clever)

 

[thomas]

[/i]

Your friend is talking complete and utter crap!

I've worked for a search engine marketing firm, run my own online marketing business (both affiliate and small businesses) and I am currently doing my dissertation in how small businesses market themselves online. I'm far from an expert, but know enough to say that's a bad idea!!

Filling my websites with useless, hidden keywords is the last thing I would do. Fill your website with useful content that people want to read. Dodgy tricks like that may have worked in the pass...like, a decade+ ago . Getting to the top of search engines is simple.

• Good Content, which is optimised for search engines*
• Good inbound links
• A bit of patience
• A few prays ; ) and keeping your fingers crossed.

*Use things like the google keyword tool to find out what people search for, so if doing a site of energy bars...if people actually do more searches for cycling fuel bars than energy bars (I made that up), then call them cycling fuel bars. Make that the <h1>header</h1>, and use that phrase in the content (don't swap and change).

Make the URL friendly, so it's short and simple, with the page title in...not lots of random numbers and digits....to be honest, you sound like you're doing all the good stuff. Keep up the hard work

Don't ever, try and trick Google. It might work today, but it will never last...and you don't want your website blacklisted!

hhmmm - but can the Google spider ignore "nofollows"...

In theory, nofollow can be used so that a website doesn't rank another website. So if a Viagra site spammed here, then google wouldn't hold it against this site and wouldn't improve the spam sites rankings. In reality, they probably do ignore them at times. If for instance, there are lots of unique forums posts about a website/content, that appear over time then that probably does help (or at least won't do any harm).

 

[bikeyboots]

I totally agree with everything everyone has said here, I've been involved with SEO, PPC & site building for the last 7-8 years and its really not all that hard to rank well in Google, just do eveything thats been mentioned, you could also add your keywords to the "Alt" tags of your images too and maybe the odd H2, H3 tag too

 

[HJ]

Search engine spamming is like playing Russian roulette with your website's Page Rank, you run a serious risk of being sand-boxed by Google...